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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29143677">four bosoms and one troth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForsythiaRising/pseuds/ForsythiaRising'>ForsythiaRising</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Midsummer Night's Dream (Bridge Theatre 2019), Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character studies, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, a series of tasteful shakespearean orgies, after the end, angst with a happy ending without the angst, but character studies where everyone bangs each other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:20:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,027</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29143677</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForsythiaRising/pseuds/ForsythiaRising</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lysander pines (except he needn’t), Hermia’s jealous (except she’s not), Demetrius doubts (except he doesn’t), and Helena thinks (until she stops, because there are at least three better things to do and all of them are in her bed).</p><p>Or</p><p>After that night in the woods, the lovers have a lot of feelings. Also, a lot of sex.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Demetrius/Helena/Hermia/Lysander (Midsummer Night's Dream), and every combination thereof</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>four bosoms and one troth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synergic/gifts">Synergic</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from the line <i>“One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth,”</i> which is something Lysander says when he’s trying to get his hot girlfriend to sleep with him in the woods. As one does. </p><p>Synergic - thank you so much for the prompt, and I hope you enjoy the result. I did not actually set out to write sex-themed character studies; it just kind of happened. It’s a very carnal play, and this was a very carnal production of it, and this fic took off from there.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em> <b>I. Lysander</b> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, / For you in my respect are all the world: / Then how can it be said I am alone, / When all the world is here to look on me?”</em>
</p><p>Demetrius talks all through the play. </p><p>It’s all snotty, affected wit, all “<em>one lion may, when many asses do” </em> and <em> “the wittiest partition that ever I heard” </em> and that whole bit with the moonshine. It shouldn’t be funny - it should be <em> stupid </em> - Lysander had always thought Demetrius was stupid, before, and would in days past have glared at this tryhard cleverness long before he giggled. But Lysander <em> is </em> giggling, is the thing, laughing at the way Demetrius’ wry voice trips, clear and bright and obnoxious, over word after word, laughing as he tracks Demetrius’ left hand, which moves in broad, indolent gestures, long fingers falling splayed to rest on his own thigh the way Helena - fair, lovely Helena; prim, sharp-tongued Helena who Lysander has now seen and wants to see again <em> undone </em> - the way Helena’s long, slender fingers fall to the inseam of Demetrius’ other thigh, drawing small circles there on the fabric, and Lysander wonders what’s under that fabric, thinks of smooth skin—</p><p>“Oh, my,” his wife’s voice, low in his ear. </p><p>He jumps. The laughter in his throat dies swift as her small hand finds its way to his knee. It occurs to him that he is, maybe, a bit hysterical. </p><p>Heart racing, he casts a guilty glance at Hermia - at his <em> wife</em>, now, new-titled. Her face is as arch as her voice, eyebrow high, lips quirked, and he shifts his eyes nervously back to the stage, where the terrible actor is dying (again, and again, and again). Not that Lysander notices, too focused now on Hermia’s voice, continuing in his ear. “Pretty, aren’t they?” </p><p>“Hermia—” he breathes, a little too loud. He cuts off at Duke Theseus’ glare, starts again in a quieter hiss. “Whatever you’re thinking, I promise, it’s not—”</p><p>“It’s exactly what I’m thinking,” she says. He looks her full in the face, now, and realizes that twist of her mouth is a smirk, a little pleased and a little lecherous. Her gaze drifts from his, falls heated across the room, and when Lysander follows it he knows they both are tracking the set of Helena’s shoulders where they press against Demetrius’ shirt; the line of Demetrius’ throat as he tilts his head back to laugh.</p><p>That night, Lysander falls into his marriage bed, and he wonders how this is Athens. How this room, this <em> bed </em> can be part of the Athens he’s known, this bed where he licks his way up the smooth skin of Demetrius’s unclothed thigh and higher still, where he catches his wife’s eyes as he does and watches her lips curl lasciviously against the mussed tumble of Helena’s hair. How, he wonders, could this place ever be the same Athens, with all its rules and precedents and tight collars of disapproval that strangled him before. This, here, whatever this is, it does not belong in that Athens, for this is <em> living</em>, and Lysander is overfull with it. It spills over - lust and love and <em> life </em> - into his fingers, which now dig in hard where they’re pressed to Demetrius’ hips, eliciting a low, delicious, throaty noise.</p><p><em> “Again,” </em>someone says, and Lysander knows it’s for him, knows it’s for Demetrius’ groan, knows it’s Hermia’s voice.</p><p><em> Again</em>, Lysander thinks, so very full, insatiable. <em> Forever</em>, he want to correct her, wants to explain that this is what he wants - forever, for always, to have and love and lust and live, this and this and more of this until he’s had his fill, or until has emptied his own fullness, and that will be forever, because he is so full of life that he could never be empty again. <em> Forever</em>, he thinks, but it’s too big to even imagine how to explain it, and his mouth is busy anyway. And so, he settles for again. And again. And again.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em> <b>II. Hermia</b> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So methinks: / And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, / Mine own, and not mine own."</em>
</p><p>Helena asks, a few days after the wedding, if Lysander always had that look. The hungry-wanting-begging one, the one he turns on her, or Helena, or Demetrius, or some combination thereof, and the next thing finds them all in bed a-tangle, his head between Hermia’s thighs or his hand at Helena’s breast or Demetrius’ legs around his hips. </p><p>It’s not an unhappy question - lord knows Lysander finds all his partners willing, gleeful, with laughter and teasing and that kindness Hermia has always loved him for, and she knows from her own appreciative gaze that Helena raises the option herself, often enough. They all do. But there’s a certain kind of fervor Lysander brings - Hermia knows this, and it has not changed. She remembers it from before - from his hands, pulling her hair loose as he promised her a love both rough and true, from his eyes when he begged her to let him lie beside her in the woods, before they shared a marital bed. She remembers the heat of knowing he <em> wanted </em> her, with that loyal, limitless passion of his, and the burn of knowing she herself returned it - and, too, the delicious longing of sending him off to lie afar, of knowing he’d obey, of having him and knowing she would <em> have </em>him, too, soon enough. </p><p>So: yes, the answer is yes. He’s always had that look. </p><p>When Helena asks her, it’s after the men have been sated, tired themselves out with the most ridiculous half-collaborative half-combative all-athletic feats and left themselves tired enough to snore, the women awake and breathless with laughter. Helena and Hermia have, in their absence, arranged themselves on the bed the way they did when they were younger, teens just coming into bodies. They curl together, one behind the other, barely clothed and touching everywhere, and in between long presses of lips and longer presses elsewhere, they whisper secrets and jokes and, yes, questions they’d never ask anywhere else.</p><p>Helena has her nose pressed against Hermia’s temple when she asks it. “Has he always been like that?” she says, and Hermia turns her head to murmur “Yes,” into her lover’s mouth.</p><p><em> But only for me, </em> Hermia thinks, though she does not say it aloud. It’s the rest of the answer, and if omission is to make a lie, then it’s the thing to make her liar. <em> He’s always looked like that, but it used to only be for me</em>.</p><p>It would be a jealous thought, it’s almost a jealous thought, but it isn’t. It is, if anything, the ghost of a jealousy both born and died in the woods - for Hermia was not a jealous woman, before the woods, and she is not a jealous woman after. That had always been Helena’s purview - Helena with her fermented frustration, her vocal bitterness, her clever complaints. Hermia had explained that to Helena, once, declared her own self <em> not the envious sort</em>, and Helena had laughed a mirthless laugh and told her it was because Hermia had everything; there was never anything to be jealous of. </p><p>They’d fought for days, that time, before coming back together in every way of togetherness they could find. But here, after the woods and with Helena’s warm palm pressed against her, fingers sliding deep, Hermia thinks she must have been right. </p><p>Because - “Yes,” Hermia says again, a broken sob of sensation, the physical rush of Helena’s hand right <em> there </em>all jumbled up with the sharp remembered pain of how Lysander’s eyes had turned from Hermia, in the woods, the milder sting of how Demetrius’ regard fell away. She whines, rocking her hips into the hot strength of Helena behind her but also the memory of Helena in the woods, surrounded by trees and dirt in her night dress, tall and statuesque and blondely gorgeous: beloved, neither something Hermia could be nor, she’d thought, something Hermia could have, ever again. </p><p>Helena’s fingers press harder, faster, and “Yes,” Hermia gasps, nonsensical. Because <em> yes, </em>Lysander has always had that look, and <em> yes, </em> he’d turned it onto someone else and <em> yes, </em> Hermia had been jealous, in those moments in the woods. Yes, she knows madness in this bed of down and on that one of moss, yes she knows what grief - for what is jealousy if not grief, the grief of not getting to <em> have </em>- can drive her to scream, to brawl. She’d nearly clawed out Helena’s lovely eyes, there in that dream they’d all shared. </p><p>“Yes,” Hermia says, claws at Helena, here and now, to draw her closer. <em> Has </em>her, for all she isn’t solely Hermia’s to have, lets Helena deftly ramp her higher and tighter and—</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>,” Hermia gasps, and it’s barely a word at all. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <b>III. Demetrius</b>
</p><p>
  <em>“Things base and vile, folding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity”</em>
</p><p>“Will you do something for me?” Hermia asks him.</p><p>They’re in bed, of course, her compact form curled along his right side and her voice a cross between casual and lewd. Demetrius opens his mouth to respond, but Helena - long and lithe at his left - cuts him off with a snort. </p><p>“Not a chance,” she says, “this one’s a contrarian.” This time, Demetrius gets off half a word of protest before she continues. “Loves you when you hate him; hates you when you love him.”</p><p>The words are teasing and vicious, flippant and serious, as Helena is wont to be. Demetrius hisses, “Helena—“</p><p>“I’m just saying, I’ve been all,” she casts a flirtatious gaze not at him but at the other girl, imitates Hermia’s voice, “<em>do something for me </em> for ages<em>. </em>You ought to get in line.”</p><p>Hermia sticks out her tongue at that. Demetrius glares and splutters. “I— you— we—“ the girls turn to look at him expectantly, so he collects himself as much as he can to say, to Helena, “guess you’ll have to ask again.” He tries for sultry, but he knows he misses by a league. </p><p>Hermia’s stifled chuckle just confirms his awkwardness. “Yes, Helena,” she says, clearly humoring him. She exchanges a blatantly wicked glance with the other girl, “by all means, ask again.” </p><p>He used to call them sweet, Demetrius thinks. Both of them, at different times - <em> sweet Hermia, </em> back when he’d thought to wed her; <em> sweet Helen </em> earlier still, when he’d thought to do everything <em> but </em> wed <em> her</em>, to his shame. </p><p>He’s not sure why he called them that. He thinks he must not have been paying much attention, for here they are flanking him, vivid and playful and dangerous, Hermia blunt force and Helena sharp wit, neither one saccharine at all. If any one of them is sweet, it must be Lysander, across the room at the water jug - and when he scoffs into his glass at Demetrius’ predicament, Demetrius decides that no, none of them fit that word at all. </p><p>(Demetrius wonders if you can change in your sleep. Not the little ways - hair grows, and so do nails, he knows that. But - but he remembers before, remembers when he was the one watching and Lysander was wooing Hermia. Demetrius had wanted her, then, and he had gone to her father for her, even while his rival spent his time on the girl herself. Demetrius’ plan - it doesn’t seem like an in-love kind of thing to do, now he thinks of it, and he wonders if dreams can make you kinder, more thoughtful, if they can pass across your eyelids and tell you to <em> pay attention </em> and if maybe then you will, maybe then you’ll change. If you can go to bed your worst self and somehow wake up your best. He wonders—)</p><p>Helena leans in close to his ear. “Use me,” she purrs, and his heart speeds up in a rush and he wonders if he should have expected this. But no, nothing could prepare him for the way he shivers now, not even the memory of her voice around these words once before, on that night in the woods, that night with the moon’s light muffled through a thick canopy of trees, with Helena on her knees, familiar and lovely and how, how could not have been <em> paying attention</em>, he wonders, how had he left her there alone?</p><p>She sounds different, now, teasing instead of begging, and the sultry roll of it is nearly ruined by an edge of laughter - “spurn me,” she goes on, mouth against tender skin, the floral scent of her washing against his heated cheeks as her voice goes lower still, sliding into a throaty, intense rasp of, “<em>strike me.” </em>He gasps at it, and at her teeth against the whorl of his ear, and at her hand upon him under the sheets, and he can’t help at all as his eyes flutter closed and his head tilts up and left, searching for the warm tease of her breath - closer, closer still, just a hair’s breadth from his, and—</p><p>She pulls away fast, mouth and hand and all, laughing raucous and loud and leaving him lurching as his eyes snap open. Hermia is laughing too, a mess of giggles, and Demetrius knows he’s blushing - in part because he feels the heat on his face, in part because Hermia is poking at his cheeks. He slaps at her hands and flops grumpily into the bed behind him, grumbling, “Ugh, hush, would you.” </p><p>Helena presses her mouth to his in a darting kiss, pulls her hand out from the sheets to wiggle fingers in his face. “Make me,” she laughs, a joke and a challenge and just a little a request.</p><p>Demetrius does his best to comply. </p><p>(He doesn’t really wonder, if he’s honest. Because he knows you can - change in your sleep, that is. Demetrius knows dreams can teach compassion and passion and pleasure, that you can go to bed cruel and wake up kind, or kind of kind, or the right kind of kind to make someone - <em> someones </em> - happy, if you get lucky in your dreaming. He knows you can go into the woods of night with the word <em> love </em> on your lips but not in your heart and wake up with it blooming through your every pore, like wildflowers after a midsummer faerie ball.</p><p>This he knows. </p><p>Just— </p><p>Don’t ask him how.)</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <b>IV. Helena</b>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why, then, we are awake: let's follow him / And by the way let us recount our dreams.”</em>
</p><p>Lysander would say it started with him. He was, after all, the one with the bright idea to journey through the forest - he’s the one with the aunt none of them ever met, with the plan and the means and the nerve. He’s the one who asks Hermia, and Hermia’s the one who goes with him, and Demetrius is the one who follows them, and Helena goes last. </p><p>That’s true. It’s also wrong. </p><p>It starts with Helena. It’s Helena who tells the secret, Helena who fills so full of spite it spills over into cruelty. Without Helena there would have been this: one couple eloped to exile and another shattered in Athens, or else one lost in the woods and another equally lost at home. And indeed, it’s Helena who goes last into the woods. She starts it, and she finishes it too, their little quartet.  </p><p>It’s maybe not surprising she likes it when they remember that, when they prove they remember she’s <em>here. </em> She likes to be in the thick of it, to be <em> wanted</em>, twined in arms and legs and mouths and hair and teeth. She likes the way they taste, how they feel, and likes even more the way they seem to like how she tastes, how she feels.</p><p>Tonight, a change of pace. Tonight, she watches. </p><p>It’s not her favorite, usually, but she can’t deny there’s a particular brand of eroticism to this: lounging naked in a padded chair in the room’s corner, one leg propped on the seat and elbow on her knee while she picks at a plate of sweetmeats and eyes her lovers. There’s a novelty to it, something illicit to the frankness with which they invite her gaze. Strange, that for all their bedroom antics, this is the one that retains that edge of taboo. </p><p>Tonight finds Hermia between the men, bright and commanding and dwarfed by their lanky frames, though Helena would never dare say so. Helena knows how that feels, to be where her oldest friend is now - in this bed, of course, tonight and last night and all the nights to follow, but also in a bed of leaves, ankle-deep in the moss and the flowers and the dirt of the woods that stands on Athens’ edge.  </p><p>She brings forth the memory now - vivid and hazy, shadowed and brightly colored, as dreams are wont to be. There was Lysander at her back, arms around her with breathtaking fervency, a far cry from the gentle measure she’d expected from her best friend’s paramour. And there was Demetrius on his knees, begging and hopeful and attentive. That had been her place, before the woods; she thought she’d mind more, seeing it usurped. </p><p>That, then, had been the contradiction, that night in the woods: Lysander vehement and Demetrius docile, and then add to it Hermia, Hermia who’d always wanted for nothing, Hermia suddenly screaming and clawing with jealousy. Players against type, the lot of them.</p><p>They’d changed, that night. Helena knows this, or maybe she thinks it, or maybe she feels it, or maybe she made it up. Maybe she’s the one who changed, and maybe this new-shifted Helena notices things that have always been. Maybe she was asleep, maybe they all were asleep, and this is what it is to wake. </p><p>A gasp from the bed - Hermia, maybe, or Demetrius. Lysander’s smile is smug. </p><p>“Are we boring you?” He calls, with a wink. He extends a hand, pulling his armful of lovers into the forest pillows and beckoning her to join.</p><p>Helena laughs, real and amazed and happy - and what else can she do?</p><p>“Never,” she says, and follows them in.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>To paraphrase a certain fairy: if you didn't like this, please remember it's all made up.</p><p>(But I really do hope you liked it.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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